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During this holiday weekend, we're re-running some of our most popular posts chock full of timeless savings tips. Our goal is to bring you freedom from ever paying full price again! Below is one of our most popular posts from our Savings 101 section, in our Getting Started series. 

 

We hope you have a great holiday weekend!

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At cincysavers.com, our savings experts are regular people just like you who have learned to get really good deals with the least amount of effort. They've gotten pretty good at it! During our cincysavers.com $1K Challenge, they turned a $1k donation into more than $6,500 in groceries for a local food bank and now they want to help you do the same thing for you and your family. When you're first starting to use coupons, it can be overwhelming. But it doesn't have to be! Our savings experts are here to help you get started with the best tips and the least amount of hassle. Our experts recommend beginning slowly and having a game plan rather than roaming the grocery store aisles looking for good deals. Saving money takes some patience and organization for it to pay off, and a little planning goes a long way. After an initial investment of time to get organized and learn the system, couponing doesn't take much longer than shopping without coupons. Use these five steps and you'll be on your way to becoming a savings expert yourself. 1. Make a menu plan. 
This will help you spend your money on the items you'll get the most out of - the items you purchase often because they're in most of your meals. Get a calendar, sit down and write out the meals you most often make. Most people eat the same eight to 10 meals on a regular basis, so start by writing down your favorites. The items you need for these meals are the items you need to stock up on. 2. Make a master shopping list. 
If you buy an item three or four times per year or more, it belongs on this list. This shopping list is for every single item you purchase on a regular basis and will help you know what to look for sales on. This list helps make sure you're looking for coupons for the right items and not wasting time or money on the things that look appealing when you see a good sale but that you don't use that often in actuality. 3. Start a price book. 
Pair your master shopping list with prices. Write down the price of whatever you're buying on a regular basis so you can keep track of the product's price cycles. Within a single month the same item can go through significant price changes, so if you keep track of this cycle, you can plan on using your coupons during the lowest price periods - saving you more money. 4. Start stockpiling.
This is such an important tip. Many times people shy away from stockpiling, but if you want to save hundreds of dollars on your shopping trips, don't ignore this advice. Coupons alone won't save you the maximum amount of money. Buying items now that you'll need later is what stockpiling is all about. If you see an item that you'll need in the future and it's on sale (or free) now, then buy a few and save the extra for later. That way, when you need that item you'll already have it, but you'll have spent the lowest price possible. 5. Use coupons strategically.
Make sure you wait until an item goes on sale and then use your coupons to save! Try to go to stores that are doubling coupons (for instance, Kroger currently doubles coupons up to $.50 and rounds others up to $1), use a store coupon and a manufacturer coupon and stock up on all the items you'll need in the future. By combining coupons with sales, you'll even more money than if you were using your coupons on regularly priced items. 6. Order coupons online
Don't think you have time to search for and clip coupons? No worries. For only a few dollars, you can order all your coupons online. You can have all your favorite coupons clipped, organized and delivered to your front door. It may seem counter-intuitive to pay for coupons, but being able to order multiples of the same coupons for items you use a lot will save you more money than you spent on the coupons. Just search for a coupon clipping service online or check out eBay. You'll be surprised how much you can find. We used eBay and coupon clipping services in our $1K Challenge and deducted the price of the service from our $1K budget – and it saved us even more than we would have saved on our own. 7. Use more than one coupon when you can.
Ok, you can only a specific coupon once - like, you can't buy five bottles of shampoo and scan a $1 off one bottle five times. But you can buy five bottles and use five separate coupons. You also can't typically use multiples of the same coupon on one item. However, you can often use both a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon on a single item to maximize savings. Manufacturer coupons are typically labeled as such. Be careful, though - don't use copied coupons. This is illegal. But don't worry – you can receive multiples of coupons in other ways to save the most. Use a coupon clipping service online to order multiples of coupons for your favorite products, or purchase several newspapers and clip several of the same coupons. 8. Know the differences between the "one per... " restrictions on coupons.

• If a coupon says "one per purchase," remember that every item you buy is a "purchase." This means you can buy four items and use a coupon on each one.
• If the coupon says "one per transaction," however, that means you'll have to do several transactions (each register transaction) if necessary, in order to get your items.
• If a coupon says "one per visit," you'll need to leave the store and visit another time before the sale is over to get the deal again, or leave the store and visit another location to get the deal again.
• If the coupon says "one per person," every person can use the coupon once - family members, friends, whomever! Maximize your savings.
• If a coupon says "one per household," purchase your one item and the deal is over for you.

9. Check your receipt before you leave the store.
It can get chaotic at the register if you're using a lot of coupons, and it's easy for the cashier to accidentally miss scanning some. You don't want your hard work to go to waste, so be sure to double check your receipt before you leave to make sure all of your coupons were scanned correctly. 10. Stay organized. 
Save time and stress by keeping everything organized:

• Get a binder with handles.
• Use tabs to file your coupons alphabetically.
• Place all clipped coupons into clear plastic baseball card inserts.
• Your binder should have an area in front to hold a calculator, paper clips, a pen and a pair of scissors.
• Also have a spot in the binder to place all of the coupons you're using during your trip, so they don't get mixed up with ones you're saving.

Having this binder full of your coupons will allow you to easily flip through and find the coupons you need, right away. This may seem like a lot of work – and it is, to get things set up. Set aside a few hours a week to get started, figure out what you're using and figure out pricing. If you can make this initial commitment, you can move forward with coupon without a lot of time and effort. Many people reach $300 a month in savings in as little as three months! And don't forget, you can always check cincysavers.com for the best matchups, then order your coupons online and save!

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